


Tarnished

by LadyNorbert



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Childhood Sweethearts, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Reconciliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:48:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26261407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyNorbert/pseuds/LadyNorbert
Summary: Love, like a ring, is a circle without end. When it comes to matters of the heart, Moira Cousland finds herself back where she started.
Relationships: Female Cousland/Nathaniel Howe
Comments: 7
Kudos: 17
Collections: Black Emporium 2020





	Tarnished

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Settiai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Settiai/gifts), [endtable_fororphans](https://archiveofourown.org/users/endtable_fororphans/gifts).



> Special thanks to wintertree for beta reading!

There was a man in the prison cells underneath Vigil’s Keep.

Even before she saw him, even as Seneschal Varel gave her this information, something inside of the Warden-Commander of Ferelden told her who it was. She would know him in the dark, she would know him in a dream, and she would know him now as she descended the ancient stone steps. The prison smelled musty and damp, unused for years, and the man in the cage did not look up as she approached.

“Nathaniel Howe.”

Only when he heard her voice did he look at her. His eyes grew wide with recognition, then narrowed with suspicion. “Moira Cousland.”

Almost unthinkingly, she put her hand to her throat. The Warden’s Oath pendant nestled in the hollow of her collarbone, and beside it on the leather cord was a silver ring, too small for her adult fingers. It was, apart from her dog and her ancestral family weapons, the only thing she had been able to take with her when she fled her ravaged home in the dead of night.

“I thought my name would be Howe by now too,” she said, surprising herself at least as much as him. Possibly more.

“I suppose it would have been, if I hadn’t been sent away.”

“You came back?”

“You killed my father. What did you think I would do?”

“He killed my father first.”

“Does that make it right?”

She shrugged. “I’m a Grey Warden, Nathaniel. It’s the only reason I’m still alive. I’m not the best person to ask about right and wrong.”

“I came here to kill you,” he admitted. “I didn’t want to believe that it was really you. I came here to kill you and take revenge. But when I got inside the Vigil… I started remembering things. Things I tried to forget. So all I did was take a few keepsakes of my family. Your men got me before I could escape.”

Moira turned to Varel as he joined them. “Give him his things and let him go.”

Varel looked baffled. “He… stole from us. Stole from you.”

“The things he took belong to the Howe family. His only crime is trespassing - I’m not keeping a man locked up for trying to come home.” She held Varel’s gaze until he quailed. “Let him go.”

* * *

Nathaniel was Moira’s first kiss. They were seven and eight years old, and it was underneath an apple tree in the courtyard at Castle Cousland, and it lasted for maybe five seconds.

When she was thirteen, he put that silver ring onto her left hand. It wasn’t real silver, as she figured out when her finger started turning green. She didn’t even know where he’d found it, or if he’d bought it, or maybe he made it himself at the blacksmith’s forge - melted down a spoon or something. It didn’t matter. He offered it to her and she accepted it, and that vow was sterling enough.

It wasn’t a formal betrothal; more of a promise than anything, a promise that was shattered into a thousand pieces when he went away. By that time the ring was too small for her hands, but she kept it on a chain around her neck, hidden beneath her garments. She didn’t know why he had left, at first, but every letter she sent went unanswered. Eventually she found out where he was, why he was there, when he was expected to return home (which was effectively never), and she stopped writing. 

If he didn’t want her anymore, then she didn’t want him. She tore the ring from her throat and hurled it into a dark corner of her wardrobe, swearing on some undergarment of Andraste’s that she would never look at it again. Three days later she found it on her pillow. Exactly how it came back to her she never knew - it might have been her mother, or her maid, or her mabari, they were all equally likely suspects - but she put it back onto the chain she wore every day, and there it dwelled ever after.

When she was nineteen, Moira’s entire world was turned upside down in the course of one night, which lasted about five years and was over in a heartbeat at the same time. Had she not returned the ring to its chain when she did, she would have had to abandon it, the same way she abandoned home and family and hope and everything else she’d ever had. 

Now she was twenty-one, and the sallow-faced, sad-eyed boy she once dreamed of marrying was being released from the cage which had held him in advance of her arrival. She watched as a handful of relics of the Howe family were bundled into sackcloth and pressed into his hands, and she felt the old familiar ache rising in her chest as he turned and studied her. “Thank you,” he said.

Then he was gone, without another word.

* * *

She had work enough to occupy her. Vigil’s Keep needed upgrades and resident merchants, those merchants needed supplies, and the people needed access to the granaries. Her brother, restored to his rightful place, needed what support she could offer from a distance as he worked to purge Castle Cousland of its lingering nightmares. Above all, the Grey Wardens needed recruits, so she was not about to turn away help when it was offered, be it from her favorite drunk or a wayward mage with an excessive fondness for cats or a dwarf who was entirely too enthusiastic about finding new and inventive ways to die.

Work to do. People to assist or save or comfort. Politics to be damned.  She was the Warden-Commander of Ferelden, the Arlessa of Amaranthine, heiress presumptive of the Teyrnir of Highever, and royal chancellor to the sovereign. She had no time to spare for thoughts of her not-quite-betrothed who had walked out of her life twice, except in the deep hours of the night when his face lingered behind her closed eyelids. She could not escape him there.

Moira returned to the Vigil with her hand-selected Warden recruits, having rescued a nobleman’s daughter from the brigands who kidnapped her, only to find herself being greeted by a very familiar bowman. It had been two weeks, three days, and sixteen hours since she had watched his figure retreat from the halls of the estate, not that she had been counting, and it was much sooner than she had ever expected to see him again. 

When he had left he was dressed almost like a farmer, in homespun garments which fitted him ill. Now he was outfitted like a proper noble archer, leather armor encasing his form, braided black hair resting on his shoulders. Fleetingly she wondered if he had come to challenge her anew, or if he was satisfied in simply placing additional strain on her heart.

“You came back,” she said. It was the most eloquent statement she could find the words to make.

“You let me go. You didn’t have to, but you did,” he said. “I want to know why.”

“I think you know why.” She tried so hard to sound calm, as though none of this mattered.

“Take me with you. Make me a Grey Warden.”

“...what?”

“I have nowhere to go.” That much was true. Nathaniel’s parents were dead, as was his brother; his sister was missing and feared likewise; and their family home belonged to the Wardens. “I expected to die when I confronted you. Maybe I even wanted to. But you let me go.”

“You sound as though I should have done otherwise.”

“Moira, please. Make me a Grey Warden. Let me  _ try.” _

The others, she noted vaguely, had backed away to give them a modicum of privacy in the open courtyard. “You still hope to redeem the Howe name?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe that doesn’t even matter. Maybe it’s more important that I do my part to face the darkspawn - like my father should have done.”

“And why…” The words stuck in her throat, and she coughed. “Why should I trust you? Now, after all these years?”

“Maybe you shouldn’t. I hope you can. I never… I never forgot you, you know.” His gaze darkened. “My father said I should. ‘Bryce doesn’t think you’re good enough for his precious pup,’ he told me, before he sent me away. I believed him, just like I always believed everything he told me, and away I went. I guess I thought you felt that way too, so I let you go.”

“What changed your mind?”

“A flash of silver at your throat. I was prepared to feel nothing when I saw you, except maybe anger or hatred, but you still… you still have that pathetic ring I hammered for you all those years ago. You still… carry me with you, even after everything that’s happened.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Walking away from you after seeing that was torture.”

“And now you want to be a Warden?” she asked incredulously. She could feel herself softening to his confessions, and wished she didn’t. “You want to volunteer for this life? I’m not sure I’d even call it that, it’s more of an undeath. Even if you survive the Joining, you’ll get maybe thirty years or until you die in battle, whichever comes first. Why would you want that?”

“You’re all I have in the world, Moira Cousland,” he said quietly. “Let me be a Grey Warden, if that’s what it takes to stay at your side. Maybe if I’d been with you all along, none of this would have happened - and even if it had, at least you wouldn’t have been alone.” He hesitated, glancing past her to where Anders and Oghren were doing their best to look like they weren’t heavily speculating. “Even if you don’t want me - even if you’ve moved on - let me follow you to whatever end. After everything… it would be enough just to be near you.”

In spite of the gravity of his words, Moira felt her lips twitch. “Only to be near me? Nothing more than that?”

“Well, to start at least.” Something in Nathaniel’s features was relaxing slightly; he was daring to hope, if only a little. “We can see what happens after this ritual of yours.”

“All right. If that’s really what you want, we’ll put you through the Joining. On one condition, Nate,” she added. The old pet name slipped out without her thinking about it, and she might not have even realized it if it weren’t for the way his dark eyes brightened at the sound.

“Name it, my lady.”

“I expect a new ring at some point. One that fits - and doesn’t turn my finger green.”


End file.
